Patrick Mahomes’ cereal will be leaving shelves in KC despite massive sales
If you were waiting until the last minute to buy a box of Mahomes Magic Crunch cereal, the time is nigh.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ cereal won’t be on the shelves much longer at area Hy-Vee stores, and more won’t be shipped.
Ty Ballou, the owner of Pittsburgh-based Public Label Brands Sports, Inc., which produced the cereal for Hy-Vee, said there are roughly 5,000 boxes left in 16 of the 35 Kansas City-area stores.
Chiefs fans have snapped up 310,000 boxes of the cereal since its release on Aug. 1, Ballou said. That makes it PLB’s second-best selling athlete-branded cereal, behind Flutie Flakes, which has sold 3.5 million boxes since its initial release in 1998. Kurt Warner’s CrunchTime cereal had been No. 2.
“(Mahomes Magic Crunch) inched over Kurt Warner, which was in Hy-Vee and Schnucks stores,” Ballou said. “That was the No. 2 seller and was out a full year and was in the state of Iowa (where he grew up) and we had all of the St. Louis market when he played with the Rams. Patrick’s cereal was out an exponentially shorter time frame and in a much, much smaller radius.”
Like Flutie Flakes, which raised money for the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism, Mahomes’ cereal has been a boon to the Chiefs quarterback’s foundation. More than $100,000 has been given to 15 and the Mahomies.
Many of the boxes are believed to have been kept as a collector’s item.
“I can’t quantify it, but our estimate is at least half the boxes that have been sold have never been opened,” Ballou said. “They’re in their office, their dens or in their homes. These are collectibles, so we hope to create another cool collectible for fans.”
While Mahomes Magic Flakes will soon be off the shelves, Ballou hopes to bring a different Mahomes cereal back in the fall. But fans who want this box as a keepsake are running out of time.
“If you want a Mahomes box, I’d go get it right now because we are absolutely a thousand percent not doing more of those,” Ballou said. “Hopefully, the people who want it have one, but if you want to add one to your collection, I would go out in the next week. And it’s not in all (Hy-Vee) stores now.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 8:41 AM.
